Great Game Was Timeout Hell

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, December 23, 2000

AS HE sat there watching one of the best collegiate games in recent Bay Area memory, a game played in his honor, Pete Newell must have been pondering the lost art of the timeout.

Not the act of calling one -- that's easier than whipping up a leftover turkey sandwich -- but the art of leaving it alone.

In Newell's time, calling a timeout was considered a sign of weakness. It showed that your team was either exhausted (and thus out of shape) or unprepared for the action at hand. UCLA's John Wooden thought the same way, believing a timeout merely gave the other team a chance to regroup against his own superior strategy.

The stretch drive of Stanford-Duke, thrilling and riveting as it was, was also a timeout festival. It seemed that nothing really important could happen without either Mike Montgomery or Mike Krzyzewski bringing a halt to play. In one of those annoying sequences that characterize today's game, Montgomery called a timeout with seven seconds left -- and before play could resume, Krzyzewski called one.

The latter move clearly cost the Blue Devils, in two ways. Montgomery said it gave him a chance to impart a few more words to his team, and because it was Duke's last timeout, Krzyzewski didn't have one for the last four seconds, after Casey Jacobsen's gritty bank shot put the Cardinal ahead.

This isn't an indictment of either coach; they are easily among the top 10 American coaches at any level. They are merely staying in character with a modern trend that tells coaches, "Don't trust your players to think for themselves at any time. Whenever possible, make the decisions for them."

Perhaps most maddening is that of all teams, Stanford and Duke are best equipped to play the game without breaks. Nobody is better coached or better prepared, and nobody has more solid, quick-thinking athletes, capable of reacting to any situation that comes their way.

Just for the sake of comparison, consider the second Cal-UCLA game of the 1956-57 season. At that time, Wooden was a perfect 7-0 against the Bears since Newell had taken the job. Both coaches were adamantly against calling timeouts,

almost to the point of fanaticism. And as the game unfolded, it became an obvious test of wills.

There were no TV timeouts in those days, so coaches had an absolute stranglehold on pace and tempo. Incredibly (and try to imagine this today), neither coach had called a timeout until about four minutes remained.

"Finally," Newell recalls, "they had a kid who was really starting to tire. Within about a 45-second period, we built an eight-point lead -- and John called a timeout."

It was a decision, some say, that changed the course of history. Cal won the game and went on to win the conference title. Newell's players felt that for the first time, they had a psychological edge over Wooden and UCLA.

"And do you know that they never beat us again?" said Newell, who went undefeated in his last eight games against Wooden, climaxing in 1960. "That had so much to do with our confidence each time we played them. Our guys just figured. 'We never called timeout. They did.' "

What a great finish Thursday night. What a moment for Jacobsen and the whole Stanford program. The aftermath cries out for a rematch: Duke-Stanford, just one more time.

When it happens, I'd like to see it played in the Newell-vs.-Wooden tradition, where the best coaches have their teams prepared beyond timeouts, not ready to retreat to the bench every five minutes. With Montgomery and Krzyzewski at the controls, that would be a real treat.

CRAZED TIGERS

One of the great sports photographers in the country, Examiner-turned- Chronicle star John Storey, captured the moment with his front-page effort yesterday morning. The photo says so much about Jacobsen, who knew he couldn't celebrate his game-winner because Duke was flying up the court. And it says a lot about Tiger Woods, leaping wildly into the air, not too afraid to act like a child when it comes to his beloved Cardinal . . . You look into Jacobsen's face and you can easily imagine him at the age of 10, scrapping his way through playground games. With Duke's Mike Dunleavy, it's still peach-fuzz time. He may have blown two big free throws at the end, but the 6-8 sophomore has his dad's good court sense and some very fluid moves . . . Fox Sports Bay Area got a big break with its Stanford-Duke telecast, joined in progress, when the Sharks didn't go into overtime. Still, there's no excuse for not showing hoops from the beginning. Yet another misfortune in this minor-league TV town .

. . Cal officials, apparently oblivious to Newell's influence and the glory he brought to the school, are balking about appearing in next year's Newell Challenge (another barn-burner with Stanford and Michigan State on hand). They want it to be a home game, in their own gym, and are reluctant to get lured into a road-game obligation with whomever they play. That's so weak. But guess what: the tournament is bigger than some petty argument. Newell could easily turn to USF, whom he guided to the prestigious NIT title in '49, and blow off Cal altogether . . . Imagine the Rams having to depend on the Chicago Bears (beating Detroit) to get into the playoffs. That's like betting the farm on a broken-down horse. Clueless beyond belief, the Bears decided to focus on Jerry Rice last Sunday and completely wreck his farewell to the fans. That's lame enough for a team going nowhere. But in doing so, they ignored the real stud among the 49er wide receivers, Terrell Owens, and he set a league record with 20 catches . . . That was a rude development, by the way. Maybe it was a torch- passing, of sorts, but it wasn't appropriate to overshadow Rice in that manner.

Bill Walsh loved it, though. Never one for sentiment when it comes to unloading superstars, Walsh probably savored Owens' glimpse into the future . .

. ESPN hit rock-bottom this week with its three-part "inside" look at the Manny Ramirez signing. Television cannot get more dreary than a conversation between Red Sox GM Dan Duquette and agent Jeff Moorad, the two most boring people in America. Then there was Ramirez, lamely demanding that some Cleveland clubhouse kid be part of the deal, when in fact the kid didn't want any part of it. Instead of exposing the lunacy of it all, ESPN treated it like some kind of Watergate investigation. Just horrible. Couldn't be worse . . . After ripping the Mets for (sensibly) laughing at some of his demands, Alex Rodriguez is now crowing about his "record" salary, saying it will be tough to break and specifically ruling out Derek Jeter. Each day, A-Rod seems to lose a little class . . . As opposed to Dennis Higgins, for example. Higgins was deeply hurt when, after a respectable first season as a Giants broadcaster, he was dumped by KNBR. Most people couldn't accept a demotion to Triple-A duty. Higgins will handle it nobly, with his head up . . . Well, it's that time of the year. Brought up by the sea, with a lifetime devotion to surfing and its big-wave culture, your 3-Dot proprietor is making the annual trek into a second journalistic life. Check The Surfer's Journal or the website www.sfgate. com/sports/surf/columns for a look into this world. See you when the first spring-training slider hits the black.